In the past three decades a number of narrative self-concepts have appeared in the philosophical literature. A central question posed in recent literature concerns the embodiment of the narrative self. Though one of the best-known narrative self-concepts is a non-embodied one, namely Dennett’s self as ‘a center of narrative gravity’, others argue that the narrative self should include a role for embodiment. Several arguments have been made in support of the latter claim, but these can be summarized in two main (...) points. Firstly, a logical one: without taking the body into account Dennett’s theory becomes self-refuting. Secondly, a more practical/phenomenological point: a disembodied self-concept overlooks how personal the body is, and as such should be considered part of the self. In this paper I endorse these criticisms of non-embodied narrative self-concepts, but I argue that the relationship between the narrative self and the body is far from sufficiently fleshed out. I claim that the narrative self and the body are much more interwoven than the above criticisms suggest. What I aim to show in this paper is that the relationship between the body and the narrative self is interactive rather than unidirectional: not only does our body shape our narrative self, but our narrative self also shapes our body. The upshot of this is a better conception of the self is as a dynamic interaction between its various aspects. (shrink)

In some neuropsychological disorders memory distortions seemingly fill gaps in people’s knowledge about their past, where people’s self-image, history, and prospects are often enhanced. False beliefs about the past compromise both people’s capacity to construct a reliable autobiography and their trustworthiness as communicators. However, such beliefs contribute to people’s sense of competence and self-confidence, increasing psychological wellbeing. Here we consider both psychological benefits and epistemic costs, and argue that distorting the past is likely to also have epistemic benefits that cannot (...) be obtained otherwise, such as enabling people to exchange information, receive feedback, and retain key beliefs about themselves. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper investigates from a phenomenological perspective the origins of self-illness ambiguity. Drawing on phenomenological theories of affectivity and selfhood, I argue that, as a phenomenon which concerns primarily the ‘personal self’, self-illness ambiguity is dependent on distinct alterations of affective background orientations. I start by illustrating how personhood is anchored in the experience of a specific set of non-intentional affects – i.e. moods or existential feelings – alterations of which are often present in mental ill-health. Also through the (...) exploration of the phenomenology of acute and long-term anxiety, I suggest that self-illness ambiguity originates in the presence of moods or existential feelings that are in tension with the ones that structure the person’s experience prior to the onset of the illness or when its symptoms are not experienced. More specifically, I claim that due to their ability to ‘block’ or ‘suspend’ some of the person’s affective and cognitive responses, such affective orientations may unsettle one’s self-defining evaluative perspective, leading to uncertainty and doubting about one’s personal self. (shrink)

In this study I explore from a phenomenological perspective the relationship between affectivity and narrative self-understanding in depression. Phenomenological accounts often conceive of the disorder as involving disturbances of the narrative self and suggest that these disturbances are related to the alterations of emotions and moods typical of the illness. In this paper I expand these accounts by advancing two sets of claims. In the first place, I suggest that, due to the loss of feeling characteristic of the illness, the (...) narratives with which the patients identified prior to the onset of depression are altered in various ways, thus leading to the weakening or abandonment of the narratives themselves. I then move to show that these autobiographical narratives are replaced by new stories which possess a distinctive structure and I argue that this is dependent upon specific configurations of affective experience, such as existential feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and isolation, and particular forms of temporal and spatial experience. (shrink)

A number of reports have suggested that patients who undergo deep brain stimulation may experience changes to their personality or sense of self. These reports have attracted great philosophical interest. This paper surveys the philosophical literature on personal identity and DBS and draws on an emerging empirical literature on the experiences of patients who have undergone this therapy to argue that the existing philosophical discussion of DBS and personal identity frames the problem too narrowly. Much of the discussion by neuroethicists (...) centers on the nature of the threat posed by DBS, asking whether it is best understood as a threat to personal identity, autonomy, agency, or authenticity, or as putting patients at risk of self-estrangement. Our aim in this paper is to use the empirical literature on patients’ experiences post-DBS to open up a broader range of questions - both philosophical and practical, and to suggest that attention to these questions will help to provide better support to patients, both before and after treatment. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) uses electrodes implanted in the brain to modulate dysregulated brain activity related to a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions. A number of people who use DBS have reported changes that affect their sense of self. In the neuroethics literature, there has been significant debate over the exact nature of these changes. More recently, there have been suggestions that this debate is overblown and detracts from clinically-relevant ways of understanding these effects of DBS. In this paper, (...) we offer an alternative approach to understanding the effects of DBS on the self, drawing on John Sadler’s work on self-illness ambiguity. We argue that self-illness ambiguity is a complex concept, with at least three different aspects, and that each of the three aspects we identify also characterizes one kind of DBS-related change. Our analysis also suggests ways of helping patients to adjust to life as a DBS user. (shrink)

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) uses electrodes implanted in the brain to modulate dysregulated brain activity related to a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions. A number of people who use DBS have reported changes that affect their sense of self. In the neuroethics literature, there has been significant debate over the exact nature of these changes. More recently, there have been suggestions that this debate is overblown and detracts from clinically-relevant ways of understanding these effects of DBS. In this paper, (...) we offer an alternative approach to understanding the effects of DBS on the self, drawing on John Sadler’s work on self-illness ambiguity. We argue that self-illness ambiguity is a complex concept, with at least three different aspects, and that each of the three aspects we identify also characterizes one kind of DBS-related change. Our analysis also suggests ways of helping patients to adjust to life as a DBS user. (shrink)

Philosophically, the most interesting objection to the reliance on advance directives to guide treatment decisions for formerly competent patients is the argument from the loss of personal identity. Starting with a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, the argument concludes that the very conditions that bring an advance directive into play may destroy the conditions necessary for personal identity, and so undercut the authority of the directive. In this article, I concede that if the purpose of a theory of personal (...) identity is to provide an answer to the question What is it for a person to persist over time?, then reflection on personal identity poses a potentially serious threat to the moral authority of advance directives. However, as Marya Schechtman observes, questions about how a single person persists through change are not what most of us are interested in when we think about who a person is. Rather, we are interested in what it means to say that a particular set of actions, experiences, and characteristics is that of a given person rather than someone else. (shrink)

Philosophically, the most interesting objection to the reliance on advance directives to guide treatment decisions for formerly competent patients is the argument from the loss of personal identity. Starting with a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, the argument concludes that the very conditions that bring an advance directive into play may destroy the conditions necessary for personal identity, and so undercut the authority of the directive. In this article, I concede that if the purpose of a theory of personal (...) identity is to provide an answer to the question What is it for a person to persist over time?, then reflection on personal identity poses a potentially serious threat to the moral authority of advance directives. However, as Marya Schechtman observes, questions about how a single person persists through change are not what most of us are interested in when we think about who a person is. Rather, we are interested in what it means to say that a particular set of actions, experiences, and characteristics is that of a given person rather than someone else. (shrink)

Algorithms are used across a wide range of societal sectors such as banking, administration, and healthcare to make predictions that impact on our lives. While the predictions can be incredibly accurate about our present and future behavior, there is an important question about how these algorithms in fact represent human identity. In this paper, we explore this question and argue that machine learning algorithms represent human identity in terms of what we shall call the statistical individual. This statisticalized representation of (...) individuals, we shall argue, differs significantly from our ordinary conception of human identity, which is tightly intertwined with considerations about biological, psychological, and narrative continuity—as witnessed by our most well-established philosophical views on personal identity. Indeed, algorithmic representations of individuals give no special attention to biological, psychological, and narrative continuity and instead rely on predictive properties that significantly exceed and diverge from those that we would ordinarily take to be relevant for questions about how we are. (shrink)

This article discusses two views associated with narrative conceptions of the self. The first view asserts that our whole life is reasonably regarded as a single unit of meaning. A prominent strand of the philosophical narrative account of the self is the representative of this view. The second view—which has currency beyond the confines of the philosophical narrative account—is that the meaning of a life story is dependent on what happens at the end of it. The article argues that the (...) connection between these two views is more tentative than often supposed: philosophical narrativists that see life as a single unit of value and meaning nonetheless provide grounds for arguing that the end of life is not the best and may be a particularly bad time to approach and intervene in the matter of how well one's life as a whole has gone. (shrink)

I compare and assess two significant and opposing approaches to the self with respect to what they have to say about death: the anti-narrativist, as articulated by Galen Strawson, and the narrativist, as pieced together from a variety of accounts. Neither party fares particularly well on the matter of death. Both are unable to point towards a view of death that is clearly consistent with their views on the self. In the narrativist’s case this inconsistency is perhaps not as explicit (...) but is in the end more entrenched. (shrink)

Engaging in self-narrative is often touted as a powerful antidote to the bad effects of illness. However, there are various examples of what may broadly be termed “aversion” to illness narrative. I group these into three kinds: aversion to certain types of illness narrative; aversion to illness narrative as a whole; and aversion to illness narrative as an essentially therapeutic endeavor. These aversions can throw into doubt the advantages claimed for the illness narrator, including the key benefits of repair to (...) the damage illness does to identity and life-trajectory. Underlying these alleged benefits are two key presuppositions: that it is the whole of one’s life that is narratively unified, and that one’s identity is inextricably bound up with narrative. By letting go of these assumptions, illness narrative advocates can respond to the challenges of narrative aversions. (shrink)

We notice a number of interesting overlaps between the views on personhood of Ifeanyi Menkiti and Marya Schechtman. Both philosophers distance their views from the individualistic ones standard in western thought and foreground the importance of extrinsic or relational features to personhood. For Menkiti, it is ‘the community which defines the person as person’; for Schechtman, being a person is to have a place in person-space, which involves being seen as a person by others. But there are also striking differences. (...) Schechtman sees this aspect as expanding the scope of personhood to infants and those who are severely mentally disabled. Menkiti thinks that there is a line to be drawn at some point between those humans that are persons and those who are not. We consider the cases offered in questioning how the dispute between the two views should be resolved. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman has raised a series of worries for the Psychological Continuity Theory of personal identity (PCT) stemming out of what Derek Parfit called the ‘Extreme Claim’. This is roughly the claim that theories like it are unable to explain the importance we attach to personal identity. In her recent Staying Alive (2014), she presents further arguments related to this and sets out a new narrative theory, the Person Life View (PLV), which she sees as solving the problems as well (...) as bringing other advantages over the PCT. I look over some of her earlier arguments and responses to them as a way in to the new issues and theory. I argue that the problems for the PCT and advantages that the PLV brings are all merely apparent, and present no reason for giving up the former for the latter. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman express grave doubts about the acceptability and informativeness of the thought-experiments employed by analytic philosophers (notably Derek Parfit) in the debate about personal identity, and for what appear to be related reasons. I consider their reasoning and argue that their reasons fail to justify their doubts. I go on to argue that, from this discussion of possible problems concerning select thought-experiments, something positive can be learned about personal identity.

Nils-Frederic Wagner takes issue with my argument that influential critics of “transplant” thought experiments make two cardinal mistakes. He responds that the mistakes I identify are not mistakes at all. The mistakes are rather on my part, in that I have not taken into account the conceptual genesis of personhood, that my view of thought experiments is idiosyncratic and possibly self-defeating, and in that I have ignored important empirical evidence about the relationship between brains and minds. I argue that my (...) case still stands and that transplant thought experiments can do damage to rivals of a psychological continuity theory of personal identity like Marya Schechtman’s Person Life View. (shrink)

The psychological continuity theory of personal identity has recently been accused of not meeting what is claimed to be a fundamental requirement on theories of identity - to explain personal moral responsibility. Although they often have much to say about responsibility, the charge is that they cannot say enough. I set out the background to the charge with a short discussion of Locke and the requirement to explain responsibility, then illustrate the accusation facing the theory with details from Marya Schechtman. (...) I aim some questions at the challengers’ reading of Locke, leading to an argument that the psychological continuity theory can say all that it needs to say about responsibility, and so is not in any grave predicament, at least not with regard to this particular charge. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of the dislocated self following deep brain stimulation (DBS) and concludes that when personal identity is understood in dynamic, narrative, and relational terms, the claim that DBS is a threat to personal identity is deeply problematic. While DBS may result in profound changes in behaviour, mood and cognition (characteristics closely linked to personality), it is not helpful to characterize DBS as threatening to personal identity insofar as this claim is either false, misdirected or trivially true. (...) The claim is false insofar as it misunderstands the dynamic nature of identity formation. The claim is misdirected at DBS insofar as the real threat to personal identity is the discriminatory attitudes of others towards persons with motor and other disabilities. The claim is trivially true insofar as any dramatic event or experience integrated into one’s identity-constituting narrative could then potentially be described as threatening. From the perspective of relational personal identity, when DBS dramatically disrupts the narrative flow, this disruption is best examined through the lens of agency. For illustrative purposes, the focus is on DBS for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. (shrink)

In non-philosophical discourse, “identity” is often used when the specific character of artefacts is described or evaluated. We argue that this usage of “identity” can be explicated as referring to the symbol properties of artefacts as they are conceptualized in the symbol theory of Goodman and Elgin. This explication is backed by an analysis of various uses of “identity”. The explicandum clearly differs from the concepts of numerical identity, qualitative identity and essence, but it has a range of similarities with (...) the notion of self-concept used in psychology and practical philosophy. The proposed explication is used to analyse claims about identity-pluralism and identity-conflicts. Firstly, the explication allows us to distinguish various ways how the same artefact can have a plurality of identities. Secondly, more or less sharp conflicts within an identity or between identities of an artefact are distinguished. Thirdly, many phenomena called “identity-conflicts” are only apparently identity-conflicts and can be analysed as involving some other form of tension. (shrink)

Marya Schechtman has given us reasons to think that there are different questions that compose personal identity. On the one hand, there is the question of reidentification, which concerns what makes a person the same person through different time-slices. On the other hand, there is the question of characterization, which concerns the actions, experiences, beliefs, values, desires, character traits, etc. that we take to be attributable to a person over time. While leaving the former question for another work, Schechtman answers (...) the latter question by proposing what she terms the narrative self-constitution view, whereby Schechtman claims that we account for intuitive features of characterization through narratives. Still, merely having a narrative is not enough. In order to live the life of a person, an agent’s narrative must sync with the narrative told about him/her in community. This paper, while in full agreement with Schechtman’s claim regarding narratives and their ability to explain the intuitive features that regard the question of characterization, puts pressure on the latter claim. I argue that a person’s narrative is not merely one that synchs with the narrative told in community, but one that is determined by the person’s community. In focusing on Schechtman’s second claim, I appeal to the Akan conception of personhood, showing that the community sets the parameters of personal identity, and by body politics and conferring social recognition, determines the traits that we take to be attributed to a given person over time. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that reference to a developmental account of agency can help explain, and in cases also alter, our current practices when it comes to the non-consensual medical treatment of children. It does this through its explanation of how stages of development impact the types of interests we have.

In recent years, several studies have advocated the need to expand the concept of patient autonomy beyond the capacity to deliberate and make decisions regarding a specific medical intervention or treatment (decision-making or decisional autonomy). Arguing along the same lines, this paper proposes a multidimensional concept of patient autonomy (decisional, executive, functional, informative and narrative) and argues that determining the specific aspect of autonomy affected is the first step towards protecting or promoting (and respecting) patient autonomy. These different manifestations of (...) autonomy are not mutually dependent; there may be patients who have problems in one dimension, while at the same time being fully autonomous in others. Nevertheless, a close interaction has been observed between the various dimensions and indeed, a phenomenological analysis shows that damage to or a reduction in one aspect of people’s capacity for self-government generally affects other aspects of their autonomy, which in turn disrupts their identity and the way in which they see themselves and are seen by others. In this paper, I shall examine some of these interactions and show how they may lie at the heart of the problem of poor treatment adherence (where adherence is defined as being the extent to which a patient’s behavior over time coincides with the recommendations made by and agreed with their health professional). One example given is that of psoriasis, a chronic skin disease with a very poor adherence record. In Spain, it is calculated that 85% of patients diagnosed with mild to moderate psoriasis fail to comply properly with their treatment, and figures from other parts of the world are similar. Although there are many possible causes for non-adherence among psoriasis patients, assessing their decisional, executive and narrative capacities and taking appropriate action based on the results may help increase adherence rates. (shrink)

How have online communities affected the ways their users construct, view, and define their identity? In this paper, we will approach this issue by considering two philosophical sets of problems related to personal identity: the “Characterization Question” and the “Self-Other Relations Question.” Since these queries have traditionally brought out different problems around the concept of identity, here we aim at rethinking them in the framework of online communities. To do so, we will adopt an externalist and cognitive point of view (...) on online communities, describing them as virtual cognitive niches. We will evaluate and agree with the Attachment Theory of Identity, arguing that there is continuity between offline and online identity and that usually the latter contributes to the alteration of the former. Finally, we will discuss ways users can enact self-reflection on online frameworks, considering the impact of the Filter Bubble and the condition of Bad Faith. (shrink)

Narrative identity theory in some of its influential variants makes three fundamental assumptions. First, it focuses on personal identity primarily in terms of selfhood. Second, it argues that personal identity is to be understood as the unity of one’s life as it develops over time. And finally, it states that the unity of a life is articulated, by the very person itself, in the form of a story, be it explicit or implicit. The article focuses on different contemporary phenomenological appraisals (...) of the narrative account. The survey of this partly critical debate is followed by concluding observations concerning a possible phenomenological theory of personal identity. (shrink)

This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the (...) Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question. These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

Heidegger, like Kierkegaard, has recently been claimed as a narrativist about selves. From this Heideggerian perspective, we can see how narrative expands upon the psychological view, adding a vital teleological dimension to the understanding of selfhood while denying the reductionism implicit in the psychological approach. Yet the narrative approach also inherits the neo-Lockean emphasis on the past as determining identity, whereas the self is fundamentally about the future. Death is crucial on this picture, not as allowing for the possibility of (...) a final meaning to our lives, but as determining Dasein as ‘pure unactualizable possibility.’ Ultimately, therefore, narrative is not what constitutes selfhood – but this does not mean that narrative is not relevant to personal identity, because narrative allows identity to be expressed in action. (shrink)

“Virtue theory for moral enhancement” is a solid article with a valuable proposal. In general, it succeeds in presenting virtue theory as the best framework for moral enhancement. I agree with the...

Optogenetics is an invasive neuromodulation technology involving the use of light to control the activity of individual neurons. Even though optogenetics is a relatively new neuromodulation tool whose various implications have not yet been scrutinized, it has already been approved for its first clinical trials in humans. As optogenetics is being intensively investigated in animal models with the aim of developing novel brain stimulation treatments for various neurological and psychiatric disorders, it appears crucial to consider both the opportunities and dangers (...) such therapies may offer. In this review, we focus on the memory-modifying potential of optogenetics, investigating what it is capable of and how it differs from other memory modification technologies. We then outline the safety challenges that need to be addressed before optogenetics can be used in humans. Finally, we re-examine crucial neuroethical concerns expressed in regard to other MMTs in the light of optogenetics and address those that appear to be unique to the memory-modifying potential of optogenetic technology. (shrink)

In our article (Zawadzki and Adamczyk 2021), we analyzed threats that novel memory modifying interventions may pose in the future. More specifically, we discussed how optogenetics’ potential for reversible erasure/deactivation of memory “may impact authenticity by producing changes at different levels of personality.” Our article has received many thoughtful open peer commentaries for which we would like to express our great appreciation. We have identified two main threads of objections. They are related to the potential applicability of optogenetics as a (...) therapeutic memory modification technology (MMT) in humans—applicability thread, and the normative value of authenticity, that is, the assumption that preserving authenticity is valuable (either in general or in the particular approach we adopted)—normative thread. Both of these threads concern fundamental issues: The former deals with the scientific credibility of the case vignette on which our discussion is based, and the latter deals with the normative weight of our considerations. We think that addressing both of them can be instructive in a broader context as they reflect a more general disagreement among neuroethicists about the very purpose and method of our discipline. (shrink)

What, if anything, is fanaticism? Philosophers including Locke, Hume, Shaftesbury, and Kant offered an account of fanaticism, analyzing it as (1) unwavering commitment to an ideal, together with (2) unwillingness to subject the ideal (or its premises) to rational critique and (3) the presumption of a non-rational sanction for the ideal. In the first part of the paper, I explain this account and argue that it does not succeed: among other things, it entails that a paradigmatically peaceful and tolerant individual (...) can be a fanatic. The following sections argue that the fanatic is distinguished by four features: (4) the adoption of sacred values; (5) the need to treat these values as unconditional in order to preserve a particular form of psychic unity; (6) the sense that the status of these values is threatened by lack of widespread acceptance; and (7) the identification with a group, where the group is defined by shared commitment to the sacred values. If the account succeeds, it not only reveals the nature of fanaticism, but also uncovers a distinctive form of ethical critique: we can critique a way of understanding values not on the grounds that it is false, but on the grounds that it promotes a particular form of social pathology. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that much of the confusion and mystery surrounding the concept of "self" can be traced to a failure to appreciate the distinction between the self as a collection of diverse neural components that provide us with our beliefs, memories, desires, personality, emotions, etc (the epistemological self) and the self that is best conceived as subjective, unified awareness, a point of view in the first person (ontological self). While the former can, and indeed has, been extensively (...) studied by researchers of various disciplines in the human sciences, the latter most often has been ignored -- treated more as a place holder attached to a particular predicate of interest (e.g., concept, reference, deception, esteem, image, regulation, etc). These two aspects of the self, I contend, are not reducible -- one being an object (the epistemological self) and the other a subject (the ontological self). Until we appreciate the difficulties of applying scientific methods and analysis to what cannot be reduced to an object of inquiry without stripping it of its essential aspect (its status as subject), progress on the "self", taken as a pluralistic construct, will continue to address only one part of the problems we face in understanding this most fundamental aspect of human experience. (shrink)

Narrative views of agency and identity arise in opposition to reductionism in both domains. While reductionists understand both identity and agency in terms of their components, narrativists respond that life and action are both constituted by narratives, and since the components of a narrative gain their meaning from the whole, life and action not only incorporate their constituent parts but also shape them. I first lay out the difficulties with treating narrative as constitutive of metaphysical identity and turn to its (...) function in practical identity. I then explore the ways narrative shapes our agency—by tapping into our motivational structures, providing an understanding of the social background within which our agency operates, guiding our agency through an understanding of our histories and aspirations, providing the links that structure actions internally, and allowing us to change the meaning of our pasts. I suggest that putting these functions of narrative together may allow us to genuinely shape our past motivational structures through our actions. Finally, if life has the form of a narrative, it may seem as if mortality is necessary for our lives and their contents to be meaningful: a narrative, it might seem, relies on the ending for its meaning. If so, an immortal life would be meaningless. I examine the possibility that even an immortal life may draw meaning from local narratives that constitute projects within such a life, while arguing that, to the contrary, narrative may be a tool exclusively adapted to mortal lives. (shrink)

I argue for the moral relevance of a category of individuals I characterize as far-persons. Following Gary Varner, I distinguish near-persons, animals with a " robust autonoetic consciousness " but lacking an adult human's " biographical sense of self, " from the merely sentient, those animals living "entirely in the present." I note the possibility of a third class. Far-persons lack a biographical sense of self, possess a weak autonoetic consciousness, and are able to travel mentally through time a distance (...) that exceeds the capacities of the merely sentient. Far-persons are conscious of and exercise control over short-term cognitive states, states limited by their temporal duration. The animals in question, human and nonhuman, consciously choose among various strategies available to them to achieve their ends, making them subjects of what I call "lyrical experience:" brief and potentially intense pleasures and pains. But their ends expire minute-by-minute, not stretching beyond, I say metaphorically, the present hour. I conclude by discussing the moral status of far-persons. (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

The Two Selves takes the position that the self is not a "thing" easily reduced to an object of scientific analysis. Rather, the self consists in a multiplicity of aspects, some of which have a neuro-cognitive basis (and thus are amenable to scientific inquiry) while other aspects are best construed as first-person subjectivity, lacking material instantiation. As a consequence of their potential immateriality, the subjective aspect of self cannot be taken as an object and therefore is not easily amenable to (...) treatment by current scientific methods. -/- Klein argues that to fully appreciate the self, its two aspects must be acknowledged, since it is only in virtue of their interaction that the self of everyday experience becomes a phenomenological reality. However, given their different metaphysical commitments (i.e., material and immaterial aspects of reality), a number of issues must be addressed. These include, but are not limited to, the possibility of interaction between metaphysically distinct aspects of reality, questions of causal closure under the physical, the principle of energy conservation. -/- After addressing these concerns, Klein presents evidence based on self-reports from case studies of individuals who suffer from a chronic or temporary loss of their sense of personal ownership of their mental states. Drawing on this evidence, he argues that personal ownership may be the factor that closes the metaphysical gap between the material and immaterial selves, linking these two disparate aspects of reality, thereby enabling us to experience a unified sense of self despite its underlying multiplicity. -/- . (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to fill, in part, three lacunae in contemporary philosophical scholarship: first, the failure to identify the two distinct types of dialogism—psychological and interpersonal—that have been operative in discussions of the dialogical self; second, the lack of acknowledgement of the six most prominent features of interpersonal dialogism; and third, the unwillingness to recognize that interpersonal dialogism is a crucial feature of human ethical agency and identity. In Chapter One, I explain why dialogism has been relatively neglected—and certainly underappreciated—in (...) contemporary Western philosophy. In Chapter Two, I offer a picture of Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of dialogism. I explain why and how Bakhtin focuses on the novel in his account of dialogism. I then offer an account of Bakhtin’s claim regarding the dialogism of the ‘inner’ speech of thought. In the second part of Chapter Two, I offer an account of Gadamer’s conception of dialogism. I begin my examination of Gadamer by discussing the event ontology that serves as the metaphysical framework for his account of “play” (Spiel) and dialogue. In doing so, I explain some of the most important ideas in this part of his thought, such as his notion of understanding, tradition, effective history, the fusion of horizons, and the text. I explain what Gadamer means by genuine conversation, or dialogue, and I then describe one of the most important ideas in Gadamer’s thought—his notion of “play.” In Chapter Three, I give a critical account of the most influential contemporary account of dialogism in psychology, offered by Hubert Hermans et al., specifically in terms of their establishment of dialogical self theory. My examination consists of several parts. First, I discuss the ways they conceptualize the self, temporally and spatially. Second, I offer a description of their account of I-positions within the dialogical self. Third, I examine their claims about the necessary features of the dialogical self, and argue against one of their claims, which says that dominance relations are intrinsic to dialogue. Fourth, I describe their account of the four kinds of relations that can emerge within the self (2010, 121). Fifth, I briefly discuss their view regarding the “[t]hree models of self and identity, associated with different historical phases” (4), that have predominated in Western history. Sixth, I consider their claim that there are “positions” within the self in addition to the “I-positions” noted above. And lastly, I evaluate their account of (what they call) the nine “features of good dialogue” (10). In Chapter Four, I offer a critical evaluation of the account of dialogue and dialogism developed by Dmitri Nikulin, arguably the leading contemporary philosopher on the subjects. While I address the features of his account that I think are correct, I ultimately argue that it is problematic for three main reasons: first, it fails to recognize the proper relationship between dialogue and agency; second, its elucidation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for dialogue contains conceptual inconsistencies; and third, its conception of the relation between dialogue and personhood has potentially disastrous ethical implications. In Chapter Five, I show how Heidegger’s notions of Dasein’s “Being-with” (Mitsein), “discourse” (Rede), and “solicitude” (Fursorge) help lay the groundwork for recognizing some important features of dialogism. I do three things in Chapter Six. First, I briefly discuss Charles Taylor’s work on dialogism. Second, I offer my account of the seven most prominent features of dialogism. And third, I argue that dialogism is a crucial feature of ethical agency and identity. To do so, I offer an example of a personal (and social) virtue, namely, empathy, which illustrates the important role dialogism plays in ethical agency. (shrink)

In this article a neo-Jamesian approach to the self is developed within a naturalistic, bottom-up, and systemic-relational framework. In this approach, consciousness of the body as one’s own body is a necessary precondition of self-consciousness as psychological self-awareness, and hence of a socially and historically situated narrative self. Thus we take on board the criticism of those accounts of the narrative self that pay little attention to embodiment, or go to the extreme of stating that the narrative self is abstract (...) and hence not embodied. But at the same time, we reject the idea that the embodiment of the narrative self is provided by a pre-reflective self-consciousness. By contrast, we view self-consciousness as a construction all the way down, which develops from automatic and pre-reflective processing of representations of objects (object-consciousness), through awareness and then self-awareness of the body, up to introspective self-awareness and then narrative identity. This form of constructivism is a naturalistic reinterpretation of the Hegelian idea that selfhood is socially constructed and self-experience intersubjectively mediated. However, it enables to move away from that blend of narrativism and epiphenomenism that characterizes some strands of the socio-constructivist approach to the narrative self. The storied Me that the selfing process makes is not “empty chatter”, but rather a causally efficacious layer of personality viewed as a self-unifying system. (shrink)

Animalism—the view that the identity across time of individuals like us consists in the persistence of our animal organisms—does poorly at accounting for our identity-related practical concerns. The reason is straightforward: whereas our practical concerns seem to track the identity of psychological creatures—persons—animalism focuses on the identity of human organisms who are not essentially persons. This lack of fit between our practical concerns and animalism has been taken to reduce animalism’s plausibility (relative to psychological criteria of identity). In this paper, (...) I survey the three leading replies to this challenge, finding them either implausible or incomplete. I will then attempt to construct the only viable response, one that begins by admitting that our practical concerns actually do not consist in a monolithic set; rather, there are distinctly different types of practical concerns, and while some are clearly grounded on psychological relations, some are actually grounded on others, including animalistic and humanistic relations; furthermore, their actual connection to identity is tenuous at best. What these concerns are, how they divide up, and what they are grounded on in each instance—these are the issues it is my second aim in this paper to take up. (shrink)

Response to commentaries on keynote article.

In this paper, I outline the cumulative network model of the self. This model articulates the self as relational, recognizing social relations as constitutive of the self. The theory arises out of concerns about the individualistic paradigms of two main frameworks in the analytic philosophical literature on personal identity, namely, the psychological and the animalist approaches to personhood and is explicitly inspired by feminist theories on relational autonomy and self. I argue that “relationality” is not only social, but that the (...) self is relational throughout, psychologically, physically, biologically, culturally, semantically, as well as socially. Hence, the self is a network of relations. The model also aims to recognize that temporality or historicity is constitutive of the self, that the self is a process, not a static three-dimensional thing. Hence, the self is a cumulative network. (shrink)

Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...) this work, there appear to be a variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life. (shrink)

This paper argues for interpreting Nietzsche along the lines of a self-constitution view. According to the self-constitution view, a person is a kind of creation: we constitute our selves throughout our lives. The self-constitution view may take more than one form: on the narrative version, the self is like a story, while on the Kantian version, the self is a set of principles or commitments. Taking Marya Schechtman’s and Christine Korsgaard’s accounts as paradigmatic, I take the self-constitution view to emphasize (...) practical considerations and the first person point of view and to conceive of the self as active in self-creation. The interpretation I offer can make sense of Nietzsche’s remarks about self-creation and of many of Nietzsche’s remarks about the self that would otherwise seem contradictory. In particular, Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysical remarks about the self fit well with the self-constitution view as long as they are understood as theoretical claims that do not undermine the importance of the practical point of view. (shrink)

In this commentary, we engage with Almaas’s contribution from the perspective of phenomenology and its idea of a ‘minimal self’. We attempt to clarify Almaas’s claims about ‘phenomenological givens’ and ‘non-dual’, ‘pure consciousness’, and then show how they might be reconciled with phenomenological approaches to consciousness and self. We conclude by briefly indicating some of the ways a comparative analysis of this sort is mutually beneficial.

This Dissertation argues for a care-centrically grounded account of relational personhood and widely realized diachronic personal identity. The moral distinction between persons and non-persons is arguably one of the most salient ethical lines we can draw since many of our most fundamental rights are delineated via the bounds of personhood. The problem with drawing such morally salient lines is that the orthodox, rationalistic definition of personhood, which is widespread within philosophical, medical, and colloquial spheres, excludes, and thereby de-personifies, a large (...) number and a great variety of human beings such as neonates, young children, the elderly who suffer from dementia, individuals with severe cognitive disabilities, and patients in vegetative states. The reconceptualization of personhood necessary for a more inclusive definition ought to originate with an appropriate moral grounding. To this end, this Dissertation grounds the notion of personhood in the care ethical sphere, thereby emphasizing the role of care relations in the maintenance of the moral consideration of vulnerable individuals. This Dissertation argues that grounding the concept of a person in care relations entails a relational account of personhood, which, along with the insights of the Extended Mind and Social Manifestation Theses, leads to an extended and externalized understanding of diachronic identity, which allows fragile people to be held in their personal identities even if they themselves lack the capacities usually associated with moral personhood. As we trace a person’s identity through time, we track the various relational properties, which constitute personal narratives and thus act as a glue that binds such dynamic and often unique properties into stable, trackable narratives. Since care relations are morally relevant on a care-centric account of personhood, what is lost in cases where such care relating ceases is not merely of sentimental value, but of great moral importance as well. Morally meaningful care relations are not replaceable, and, by extension, neither are the narratives that are constituted by such unique and irreplaceable instances of relating. This Dissertation argues that the constitutive care relational nature of personal narratives makes such narratives irreplaceable and is precisely what makes persons so morally precious. (shrink)

Is it possible to develop a personal narrative that is not fictitious or self-deceptive? In this essay, I will look at the way that personal narratives contribute to self-deception. In so doing, I will consider the narrative that the narrator or pastor of André Gide’s Pastoral Symphonie develops while reflecting upon his romantic relationship with his blind adopted “daughter”, Gertrude. Although the pastor’s narrative is largely self-deceptive, we need not fear that all narratives are equally delusional. When a narrative is (...) not self-deceptive, it can make a positive contribution to self-knowledge and moral understanding. (shrink)